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Junk 'Risto Pre-JTMS/BBE

Modern

MightyBozo

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An Abzan version of the traditional BW Aristocrat combo deck.

Cartel Aristocrat: Awesome 2/2 for 2 with protection; resilient and can beat down your opponent surprisingly quickly, definitely deserves a playset.

Viscera Seer: I used to have Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim or Yahenni, Undying Partisan in this deck, but this is basically a one-mana sac outlet and allows you to dig through your deck for stuff like Rally the Ancestors when you need it.

Doomed Traveler: The premier 1-drop, giving us a flying body when we crack it possibly on turn 2 to chump block stuff like a flipped Delver of Secrets  , etc.

Voice of Resurgence: Simply an excellent card, but even more so with the current spell-heavy Tier 1 decks (Grixis Death's Shadow, Naya Burn, etc.). Other, higher-costing options, including Brimaz, King of Oreskos and Catacomb Sifter, are a) too low in power level, b) raise the mana curve of the deck too much, or c) nonbo with Rally the Ancestors and Collected Company.

Satyr Wayfinder: Helps bring the land count down to 21, gives us another body to sac, and fills the graveyard for Lili and Rally.

Kitchen Finks: Very good against Affinity, Burn, Jeskai, 5C Humans, and other fair decks trying to race.

Lingering Souls: This deck can do a decent imitation already, but this is the real token-generator of the format. Souls is really the epitome of resilience in Modern, beating up against counters, discard, and the one-on-one removal (think Fatal Push and Terminate) dominating the format. It also provides four bodies that we can sac for huge drain with just one card. Souls is best slower, grindy and usually creature-based matchups, as we do pay the price for much-improved chumping and drain value with loss of speed from Collected Company and Rally the Ancestors. In such matchups, we have another 2 copies in the sideboard to essentially bring in a full playset.

Blood Artist & Zulaport Cutthroat: Good synergy with sac outlets; is actually a win condition for the deck in a lot of games

Dark Confidant: One of the best card draw engines in the format; it works fine with random midrange decks like Jund and Abzan, but in this deck, not only does our draining circumvent the life loss, we also can sac it at a moment's notice to gain back some life if needed, whereas other decks sometimes have to resort to killing their own Bob simply because they die otherwise. The only problem is that the decks it's designed to fight against (UW Control, Grixis Death's Shadow, etc.) can remove it quite easily. Still, in our deck, Bob helps us avoid losing a topdeck war (the individual power level of our cards are somewhat low compared to those of big ramp decks like Eldrazi Tron and Titanshift). Athreos, God of Passage, which I used to have in this slot, was a) too slow and b) gave our opponents too many choices.

Rally the Ancestors: The main reason we have token generator cards like Lingering Souls in the sideboard instead of in the main; Rally basically x2s our sac damage, since we can sac everything (and get tokens to boot), then Rally, get everything back, and then sac for more draining. Plus, almost all of our creatures are in the one- and two-drop slots, so it costs 4 mana at most. The main problem with it, though, is that it wraths our board, so we won't be casting one of these until we have absolute lethal.

Collected Company: Company is a key piece of the puzzle; it allows us to assemble our combo pieces much more quickly, thus the deck faster so that it regularly drains people down to 0 on Turn 4. We can Company at instant speed not only to get extra creatures that gives us that extra push, but also allow us to randomly screw our opponent during combat.

Liliana, Heretical Healer  : Made it into the main-deck as a 1-of after I realized the incredible value that she can generate; she comes with two bodies, can trigger at instant speed (which also gives her pseudo-hexproof, since we can blink her any number of times in response to a removal spell), and most notably, does relevant things when she flips, including her +2 ability, which synergizes well with Lingering Souls and Rally the Ancestors, as well as her -X ability and finally, her ultimate, which of course just says "you can sac all of your creatures each turn for maximum drain and token value. Oh, and just for fun, your opponents' removal spells all become useless too!". This can also create a kind of mini-combo where we sac a token generator for the token and value, flip Lili, make a 2/2, then -1 or -2 Lili to get back the token generator. This essentially leaves us with 2 tokens for the price of 0 (the zombie, as well as the free token made off of Liliana) as well as a planeswalker, some drain, and whatever value we got off the sac outlet as well.

In general, some players may think of this deck as a weird version of currently popular Collected Company combo decks, and in a way it is, but our primary plan is not to win with Company (although there's nothing to complain about slamming 2 creatures for 1 card at instant speed on turn 4), but instead to assemble a reasonable board of creatures that we can hide behind while sacrificing our board for value and eventual killing via a combination of draining and swinging with our combo creatures (Husks, Voice tokens, etc.). The creatures in this deck overall are also on curve for the most part (except the drainers, of course), and therefore can just be part of a fast value-y synergistic aggro deck at times without the combo. This is very important, since it means that our deck is much more resistant to disruption - unlike the Vizier of Remedies decks which solely rely on the two-card combo to win - and the current one-on-one removal dominating the format also has minimal/no effect on our gameplan, unlike the Vizier decks.

Abrupt Decay & Thoughtseize & Inquisition of Kozilek: More removal for cards that we absolutely need to kill, like Thing in the Ice   or Primeval Titan.

Our deck does die to some graveyard hate, including Rest in Peace/Leyline of the Void effects being highly problematic since they hose all of our death triggers; we don't get Spirit tokens from Doomed Traveler, we don't get Persist value from Finks, and worst of all, our Blood Artists and Zulaport Cutthroats just turn into bad 2-drops. Grafdigger's Cage is also somewhat annoying since it knocks out both Collected Company and Rally the Ancestors, which does total only 8 cards, but possibly the most powerful 8 cards in our deck.

Other hate cards we need to dodge/kill include Leyline of Sanctity, which blanks the Blood Artist triggers but not the Zulaport Cutthroat triggers, and activated ability hate (Pithing Needle and Linvala, Keeper of Silence, both of which thankfully only see fringe play).

Fulminator Mage: Land destruction primarily for Tron decks and Scapeshift decks, as those are the two "big mana" decks dominating the format right now.

Fatal Push: Our only real piece of creature interaction, meant for dealing with problematic creatures like Ezuri, Renegade Leader, Goblin Electromancer, Vizier of Remedies, and Meddling Mage, to name a few. Even though we are fundamentally a combo deck, we are slower than other, more single-minded decks like Storm and Affinity; therefore, some disruption is required in order for us to buy time against these decks. Push is better than Path to Exile here in general; the only things it doesn't kill are fringe options like Primeval Titan, Gurmag Angler, Tasigur, the Golden Fang, Wurmcoil Engine, and Mirran Crusader, and the natural Revolt enablers in this deck (other than the fetchlands) really max out the power of Push over that of its natural competitor.

Nihil Spellbomb: Nihil Spellbomb is pretty much the only graveyard hoser that doesn't exile our stuff as well. Leyline of the Void and Scavenging Ooze didn't make the cut since they were too situational; Leyline is a total blank if it's not in our opening hand, and Ooze was great against grindy matchups but just a horrible mana sink in others. I also managed to get away with only 2 graveyard hate cards, since they only really hose Grixis Death's Shadow (partly), Storm (partly), Living End, and Dredge, almost all of which have tanked recently and for which we have plenty of other sideboard options (Lingering Souls for Shadow, discard for Storm, etc.)

Reclamation Sage: Not as good as Stony Silence, but it kills Rest in Peace as well as Leyline of the Void and it's another threat we can Company into and sac for value.

Stony Silence: All-time good hate card, excellent against Affinity, traditional Tron, Lantern, and weird decks like KCI Combo whenever you need it.

One of our best matchups, especially since Temur Battle Rage has been on the decline lately and Grixis versions don't even run it anymore, while Jund versions running it are tanking; this means we can just endlessly chump Death's Shadows, Tasigur, the Golden Fangs, and Tarmogoyfs for extra drain & token value, while our recursive myriad of creatures pretty much blanks their one-on-one removal and also grind well with the likes of Dark Confidant providing consistent card draw. Unlike traditional Company decks, which often do nothing until Turn 4, we often lay out such a huge board until turn 4 that the Death's Shadow deck often just can't push through our giant wall of flesh with just one or two big, but nonevasive threats.

A lot of people remark on how Lingering Souls is the saving grace for lots of decks against Death's Shadow, and it's pretty clear why; the tokens can endlessly chump their big threats, require four one-on-one removal spells to completely kill, and are resistant to discard and other forms of disruption. That's why Death's Shadow often runs stuff like Izzet Staticaster and Illness in the Ranks, purely against that "trump card" that the opposition will often main-deck because of the prevalence of Death's Shadow. This deck is essentially taking the same approach, but with less possibility of being screwed due to Surgical Extractions and the like. Although less directly resilient to discard, the deck can still pull off a decent board through their million Thoughtseizes and Inquisition of Kozileks to chump Death's Shadow while drawing cards to steadily accumulate enough firepower. Another factor in our favour is that our opponents will often have to go to 8 or less life in order to threaten anything with Death's Shadow, and 8 drain damage in this deck is as simple as a sac outlet, two Blood Artists, and a token maker on board.

The other difference between the two different versions of this archetype is that the Jund version has planeswalkers, which are a little tougher to deal with but still doable with an unblockable Cartel, etc. The Grixis type is more removal-heavy compared to the discard-heavy Jund version, which means that Voice of Resurgence and Liliana, Heretical Healer   suddenly become huge, as they both severely punish our opponent leaving mana open to cast removal and such during our turn. Meanwhile, the famed discard suite doesn't hinder us that much since it just often just helps us hit more off Rally the Ancestors, and taking Rally essentially does nothing since we can still cast creatures and drain them via a bigger board.

Post-Board: Both decks will likely be bringing in a small number of wraths and discard (Flaying Tendrils, Kozilek's Return, Anger of the Gods, etc.). Graveyard hate is a concern, but most Death's Shadow decks have opted for Surgical Extraction and/or Nihil Spellbomb, which are much less effective and probably not even worth boarding in. Other, multipurpose options like Liliana, the Last Hope and Collective Brutality are relatively useless against our threats like Voice of Resurgence and Cartel Aristocrat.

+1 Inquisition of Kozilek: For Grixis versions mostly, as the Jund archetype involves more beating down with Tarmogoyfs and fast clocks, thus being much better against discard. For the BGx versions, we instead throw in +1 Abrupt Decay, as it kills Tarmogoyf, Liliana of the Veil, and Death's Shadow all for just 2 mana. Nihil Spellbomb, despite being good against delve creatures, Goyf, and Snapcaster Mage, doesn't hose enough cards and dilutes our combo.

+2 Lingering Souls: Best card in our sideboard against both decks. Period.

-1 Collected Company & -1 Rally the Ancestors & -1 Satyr Wayfinder: tempting targets for most of their discard/counter suite AND nonbo with Souls, plus just gives them more stuff to kill with their wraths like Kozilek's Return and Anger of the Gods. Company is the faster of the two and generates more value, but does pack a lot less late-game inevitability, whereas Rally is more volatile but has the power to say "I win the game" if our opponent taps out. Our overall plan post-board is to be the slightly slower but more resilient version of our main-deck.

Another intuitively favorable matchup; we regularly produce fliers and gain life, which is pretty bad news for a flier-based aggro deck. Stuff we have to watch out for includes Etched Champion, Steel Overseer (since we can't really kill it and it gives our opponent inevitability) and creature-lands, most notably Inkmoth Nexus since a Cranial Plating on it is usually just game. Thankfully, Affinity does lack late-game play and is pretty much resigned to top-decking come Turn 4, so this means that if we can stall until early-to-mid game, we should win in the long run.

Post-Board: Not much stuff Affinity can really pack against our main gameplan except more Etched Champion. Some decks, though, will have 1-2 copies of Blood Moon and/or Rest in Peace in the sideboard, which merits concern.

+1 Abrupt Decay, +1 Fatal Push: Good removal that kills almost anything and everything against this deck; Decay is expensive but dodges Spell Pierce and hits stuff like Grafdigger's Cage and Blood Moon for an additional bonus.

+2 Reclamation Sage: Good artifact hate with upside against Rest in Peace.

+1 Stony Silence: Single trump card.

+2 Lingering Souls: Gums up the board nicely.

-2 Cartel Aristocrat: Doesn't do so well against colorless creatures.

-2 Dark Confidant, -1 Liliana, Heretical Healer  , -1 Rally the Ancestors, -1 Satyr Wayfinder: Early game life loss and planeswalkers isn't what the doctor ordered against a deck capable of killing you on Turn 3 if left alone to its devices.

A slightly unfavorable matchup pre-board, but it gets worse post-board; in general, our deck is extremely resilient and can flood the board extremely quickly but does pack minimal disruption/interaction, which in turn means that we excel against aggro/other creature-based strategies but suffer against unfair decks, like this one. Thankfully, the advent of disruptive "fair" decks like Grixis Death's Shadow has largely managed to keep these decks in check, and the only three currently above the lower levels of Tier 2 are Eldrazi Tron, regular Gx Tron, and Storm.

Eldrazi Tron is definitely less unfair than regular Tron or Storm, both of which specialize in the classic "Turn 3 Karn/Past in Flames, opponent scoops" gameplan. It is trying to do unfair things, but those unfair things, like a Turn 3 Reality Smasher or a Turn-1 Chalice of the Void on 1, are not necessarily game over for our deck.

The basic Eldrazi Tron plan is to disrupt us with stuff like Thought-Knot Seer and Chalice of the Void and then run us over with Reality Smashers and Endbringers, cast ahead of schedule thanks to Tron lands and Eldrazi Temple, before we can recover. It is still fundamentally a creature-based, Eldrazi Goodstuff strategy, which does allow our chump block plan to keep us alive for some time. However, what makes matters worse for us in this matchup is their disruption, which often just slows us down enough that they can go right over the top of our low curve, or alternatively just slam right into us with Reality Smasher (which does have trample). Overall, their absurd value from Turn 2 Thought-Knot Seers doesn't kill us outright, but it will overwhelm us eventually and therefore definitely puts us in the beatdown position and on the back foot.

Here, in Game 1, Walking Ballista, Reality Smasher (which tops pretty much everything we have), and Chalice of the Void on X = 2 are the most problematic threats we face. Our best chance is to outrace them with Company and possibly Rally on turns 4 and 5 to accumulate enough drain, combined with swinging in with random Spirit and Elemental tokens, before getting run over by their creatures or locked out of game by Chalice. Land screwing them with Fulminator Mage is helpful and can often buy us a couple turns, but winning the game does require a slow hand or the wrong threats from our opponent.

Post-Board: Eldrazi Tron gets a wealth of sideboard cards, including Pithing Needle, which stops Cartel Aristocrat from doing much of anything, and good ol' Grafdigger's Cage. Both significantly delay our drain kill. Meanwhile, Surgical Extraction and Ratchet Bomb are less concerning, as having to tick up Bomb twice means we're much less likely to play into it and Eldrazi Tron doesn't run nearly enough removal to make Surgical viable without us sacing our creatures prematurely. Still, the matchup becomes even worse post-board as they maintain their versatile Eldrazi beatdown shell while increasing their disruption which slows us down even further.

+2 Fulminator Mage, +1 Thoughtseize, +1 Inquisition of Kozilek, +2 Reclamation Sage, +1 Stony Silence: Land destruction and disruption to hold down the fort. One of the bad things about the Eldrazi Tron matchup is that it is so much less artifact-dependent than Classic Tron, with them not running Chromatic Star and Chromatic Sphere for colored mana and all. This makes Reclamation Sage a bit worse, but it still hits at least 12 utility artifacts like Expedition Map, Mind Stone, and most importantly, Walking Ballista.

-2 Cartel Aristocrat: Bad against colorless.

-1 Liliana, Heretical Healer  , -1 Dark Confidant, -1 Doomed Traveler, -2 Lingering Souls: Our best chance is to run like the wind before they can get their Endbringers down; this means that cards geared towards resilience and long-term advantage, like the ones above, are much less effective as part of our gameplan.

Side Note: The sideboarding plan is pretty much the same for regular Gx Tron. Gx Tron does have less sideboard cards (usually just a single Pithing Needle or Engineered Explosives and a single Anger of the Gods or Kozilek's Return). However, Gx Tron is overall even much worse of a nightmare both post-board and pre-board compared to Eldrazi Tron simply because our sideboard disruption is limited and their threats are much more powerful (Karn Liberated and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, as opposed to Reality Smasher and Thought-Knot Seer).

Burn is a favorable matchup pre-board, while we are extremely terrible against Storm in Game 1 (both matchups are basically races pre-board, but Storm has pretty much an automatic Turn 4 kill whereas Burn takes a much more fair approach; in the case of Storm, we're pretty much forced to 20 our opponent quickly since our life gain almost always doesn't matter), but both matchups do swing further in our favor after sideboarding, as we get 4 discard spells to stall our opponent out a bit. Overall, I rank Storm as our worst popular matchup overall (by a huge margin), while Burn is clearly favorable, as we do gain substantial chunks of life in the early turns by sacing for value (against Burn, we probably want to crack our token generators in response to an almost-lethal burn spell, often bringing us back up to a reasonable life total), which makes it hard for burn-type decks in the first place.

Post-Board: A few Path to Exiles and sometimes Rest in Peaces from Burn. Meanwhile, Storm often gets access to Pyroclasm and Blood Moon, which we usually deal with using discard. Empty the Warrens isn't really a viable board-in here since it delays them for a turn even after making the Goblin tokens, thus giving us more time to perhaps kill them.

+3 Inquisition of Kozilek: Great against both Storm and Burn, unlike its relative Thoughtseize. In the Storm matchup, we also bring in +1 Thoughtseize, +1 Abrupt Decay, and +2 Nihil Spellbomb, which combo well together and disrupt the opponent by reducing their hand size, killing their creatures, and exiling stuff like Gifts Ungiven, Rituals, and Past in Flames. Meanwhile, we will be additionally boarding out two Satyr Wayfinders (our deck is cheaper now), the Kitchen Finks, and the other Lingering Souls, all of which aren't at their best in this matchup since we really don't have time to spend on mana-intensive and/or low-powered plays.

+1 Fatal Push: Need some way to kill Goblin Guides and Eidolon of the Great Revels.

-2 Dark Confidant: Bob just isn't great in this matchup since he's super geared towards the late-game, which we aren't likely to get to in these matchups; even if our opponent burns their entire hand out and needs to top-deck, we still need to kill them quickly and cleanly, not swing at them with 2/1s for 2 that lose life.

-1 Liliana, Heretical Healer  : She's awesome in grindy matchups as a long-term advantage engine, but doesn't really cut it here.

-1 Lingering Souls: A bit too slow against spell-based decks.

A 50/50 matchup pre-board; life gain often gets us out of Turn 4 Valakut 7-land kill range and buys us a turn or two even through a resolved Titan, and we can often outrace the deck by Turn 5 using our high-impact spells and attacking with unblockable Cartels and Voice of Resurgence Elemental tokens, but Titan is hard to deal with otherwise, and they have multiple wraths in Anger of the Gods and Engineered Explosives, which thankfully are only at sorcery speed but can get us if we overextend into them.

Post-Board: Titanshift gets 1-2 more wraths in Anger of the Gods and/or Engineered Explosives, as well as grindy value cards like Tireless Tracker and huge monsters like Ruric Thar, the Unbowed or Gaea's Revenge for the late-game and removal like Roast to hold us off. Relic of Progenitus, if it's not already in the main (it usually is) is also a concern since it has very low opportunity cost and it blanks Rally.

We sideboard pretty much the same as the Burn/Storm matchups, but we effectively mash the two different sideboard plans together by boarding in both the 2 Fulminator Mages for instant-speed LD with Company as well as the 1 Thoughtseize and 3 Inquisition of Kozilek. Meanwhile, we board out the two Lingering Souls (too slow), a Liliana, Heretical Healer   (bad against direct damage), as well as two Satyr Wayfinders and a Doomed Traveler (can't chump and too low-power to make any impact). Overall, the matchup is still fundamentally a race post-board, and a generally even one as both sides have chances to disrupt and kill each other by Turn 6.

Living End is favorable pre-board since we can just kill our own creatures to get them back off Living End, and Dredge is also somewhat favorable because life gain often gets us out of Conflagrate range, our creatures are resistant to Conflagrate, and we have a early board of creatures to block with, thus making Dredge's early win strategy of "attack with random Zombies and burn with Conflagrate" practically impossible. In both of these matchups, we are just trying to stall, stall, stall due to our lack of disruption and eventually build a winning board by Turn 5 or 6. Both decks pack minimum disruption, which does allow us to go all-in with our high-impact spells to speed up the clock. Sideboarding doesn't change the matchup much; it's still fundamentally a race, and we are slightly favored against both decks but will need to exercise caution.

Post-Board: Dredge largely just gets Engineered Explosives, which is good against our deck (Vengeful Pharaoh doesn't address our drain combo and Collective Brutality really doesn't do anything against the 5 instants and sorceries in our deck), whereas Living End has Leyline of Sanctity in some versions and Lost Legacy in others. Both do shut down our drain kill pretty well, but aren't even close to locking us out; Leyline still leaves them open to Zulaport Cutthroat triggers, and Lost Legacy is just such a slow and objectively unplayable card that it really doesn't have much of an impact on our gameplan.

+2 Nihil Spellbomb: Premium graveyard hate, and both cards are at their best in these matchups. +1 Thoughtseize and +3 Inquisition of Kozilek are also great against Living End, since it keeps their combo pieces mostly at bay.

-2 Dark Confidant: Same logic as Burn; Dredge and Living End are fast decks and we won't have time to really draw cards or lose life. Instead, our plan in this matchup needs to be to draw hate cards if possible, and in general try to use our life gain to buy a few turns while routinely chumping Prized Amalgams and Bloodghasts to stall while we accumulate a large enough board to sac and win. In the case of Living End, we also board out -1 Cartel Aristocrat, since it can't sac itself in response to Living End, -2 Lingering Souls as unreturnable bodies, and -1 Rally the Ancestors, since returning our creatures to the battlefield only for them to die again to Living End is a huge blowout.

This matchup is a worse one pre-board; without counter magic or removal in the main, we often simply get outraced by the Devoted Druid & Vizier of Remedies combo.

Post-Board: Linvala, Keeper of Silence just straight-up kills us, but thankfully only some Counters Company decks run it and only 1 copy of it. Otherwise, Orzhov Pontiff and Surgical Extraction are both good against us as the first is effectively a wrath and the second can hit our combo pieces, but far from game-ending since Pontiff only lands on Turn 3 and Surgical only works if we sac some of our creatures before going in for the kill.

+1 Abrupt Decay, +1 Fatal Push: Shuts down the combo on board.

+1 Thoughtseize, +3 Inquisition of Kozilek: Shuts down the combo in hand.

-2 Lingering Souls, -1 Doomed Traveler, -1 Kitchen Finks, -1 Liliana, Heretical Healer  , -2 Satyr Wayfinder: We really can't afford to draw cards and slow down in this matchup, which is basically a race both post-board and pre-board.

Very, very strong matchups; their linear removal doesn't really make a dent in our ultra-wide board, and the same goes for bashing in with Tarmogoyf; we can just chump with Doomed Travelers for value while looking for our game-ender spells. Only real problem is Dark Confidant, which we do have a hard time dealing with, but also incidentally gets us closer to draining our opponent out.

Post-Board: All three decks largely get the same package of 2-3 wraths (Damnation, Flaying Tendrils, and Anger of the Gods are popular choices) and 1-2 graveyard hate cards, with possibility of Grafdigger's Cage being pretty low but still worth consideration.

+1 Abrupt Decay, +1 Fatal Push: Removal for Bob, Goyf, Liliana, and friends.

+2 Lingering Souls: Tons of value against this deck, dodging various removal, discard, and even wraths.

-1 Collected Company, -2 Rally the Ancestors, -1 Satyr Wayfinder: Bad against discard and hate.

Particular all-stars in these matchups include Cartel Aristocrat, which is basically unkillable at all stages of the game, Dark Confidant, and Voice of Resurgence, which help us keep up with the attrition-style long game these midrange decks have.

A not immediately game-ending but favorable matchup against both the regular UW and the slightly different Jeskai variants; the resilience tools in this deck really match up well against Supreme Verdict and Path to Exile, where we can just sac our recursive token makers to make more tokens, which we can then again sac for more value. Voice of Resurgence is also an all-star in this matchup, as it just makes our opponents' counterspells and instant-speed reactive removal much worse. Our opponents' only hope with this deck, which has recently hit a spike in popularity, is to draw their counterspells, not their wraths, since Spell Snare can counter Rally the Ancestors and Snapcaster into Cryptic Command can still really be a big swing. There's not much difference in the matchup against traditional Draw-Go style Jeskai Control either; it's basically a UW control deck splashing red for Ajani Vengeant, Electrolyze, and Lightning Bolt, all of which are pretty mediocre against our deck.

Post-Board: Runed Halo and Porphyry Nodes are both weird but good against our deck; the first one stops the Blood Artist triggers from targeting them, and the last kills all of our creatures eventually. Most players will also opt for Rest in Peace or Grafdigger's Cage.

+1 Thoughtseize, +3 Inquisition of Kozilek: Automatic board-in against control; kills their win-cons, stops hate cards, and stops annoying counters from getting us.

+2 Lingering Souls: Depends on how you time it; very weak to sweepers, but stays nicely in the graveyard ready to flash back and thus makes opponents hold back on their wraths more.

-1 Cartel Aristocrat: Husk is a fast clock and Viscera Seer is cheap, but Cartel doesn't survive Supreme Verdict and can't sac itself either to prevent it from getting exiled.

-2 Satyr Wayfinder, -2 Rally the Ancestors: Too much overextension, since if we sac out for Rally and our Rally gets countered, we've basically lost our entire board and the game.

Against the CounterBurn/Tempo versions of Jeskai (without combo finishes like Saheeli Rai/Felidar Guardian or Nahiri, the Harbinger/Emrakul, the Aeons Torn) which have also taken a rise in popularity, our strategy and boarding plans are a little more different, as the CounterBurn versions focus more on racing, with an approach reminiscent of Jeskai Wins from Khans of Tarkir Standard. Since this version wins without sweepers via swinging with Celestial Colonnades and other random fliers like Geist of Saint Traft and Spell Queller while burning face with Electrolyzes, our sideboarding plan is quite different. Nevertheless, our life gain, impressive board of creatures, and the ability to win out of nowhere say that this matchup is even more favorable than control.

Post-Board: The matchup just gets better and better, as they only have access to 1-2 wraths in Engineered Explosives and Izzet Staticaster and don't even run graveyard hate thanks to Snapcaster.

+2 Lingering Souls: Dodges their counters and allows us to weather the early storm, trading for Snapcaster Mages and such.

+3 Inquisition of Kozilek: Good against spell-based aggro, unlike Thoughtseize.

-2 Dark Confidant: Helpful for the grinding-them-out stage of the game, but not so much for the sitting-tight-and-surviving stages.

-1 Liliana, Heretical Healer  : Bad against direct damage.

-1 Rally the Ancestors, -1 Satyr Wayfinder: As always, Cryptic Command says no bueno.

A generally favorable matchup, no matter what the version is (Eldrazi and Mono-White are the two most popular variants, but GW builds are circulating the internet as well); the main problem for them is that they have nearly no way of interacting with our drain kill, as they win by tempoing us out via flickering our blockers away to get in for damage and wrecking us with instant-speed Aether Vial shenanigans, both of which are much less effective against a wall of creatures that don't need to attack to deal damage.

Fundamentally, Death & Taxes is a fair creature-based deck looking to swing in with random hatebears and other value creatures to close out the game. Basically, all our opponent can hope to do is attrition/stall us out using fetchland hate like Leonin Arbiter while swinging in with Flickerwisps, Thought-Knot Seers, and other random beaters to close out the game.

Post-Board: Post-board, the matchup gets a little worse, as our opponent most likely gets 2-3 copies of either Rest in Peace or Grafdigger's Cage as their primary graveyard hate. Mirran Crusader, is great in combat and also dodges our removal. Most D & T decks will also have an optional wrath in the form of Orzhov Pontiff.

+1 Abrupt Decay, +1 Fatal Push: Kills annoying value creatures like Eldrazi Displacer, Wasteland Strangler, Thought-Knot Seer, Tidehollow Sculler, Flickerwisp, Blade Splicer, etc, etc.

+1 Reclamation Sage: Kills hate cards, Golems, Tidehollow Sculler, and most importantly, Aether Vial.

+1 Lingering Souls: Again, just a fantastic card against creature-based, grindy decks, but perhaps a little less effective here due to Thalia tax.

-1 Collected Company, -2 Rally the Ancestors, -1 Satyr Wayfinder: Bad against Thalia taxes and the mana denial plan, plus nonbo with Souls and also Grafdigger's Cage after boarding.

Three Tier 2 permanent residents; we are 50/50 against Merfolk, largely because it has Spreading Seas, punishing our mana base, as well as islandwalk, and favored against Bant Eldrazi, which does have trampling Reality Smashers and tricky Eldrazi Displacers to watch out for. Elves is a different story, as we are pretty short on ways to deal with their mana dorks and are basically forced to race before our opponent resolves Ezuri, Renegade Leader and starts Overrunning us.

B/W Eldrazi, a relative newcomer to the scene, also has pretty much the same creatures to care about, except for the particularly more annoying Tidehollow Sculler/Wasteland Strangler combo. However, all three of these decks are still fundamentally fair and looking to beat down with reasonably sized 3-4 power creatures, which lets our value train overwhelm them in a lot of cases. Nothing changes much in the sideboard; the match is still fundamentally a race between them looking to beat down with undercosted creatures and us looking to grind them out with instant-speed tricks.

Post-Board: Not much from these decks in the way of hate; Worship, Relic of Progenitus, and Sea's Claim all seem just too situationally good and therefore objectively useless. Merfolk's best option is probably Gut Shot as cheap removal to take down stuff like Spirit tokens, whereas Bant Eldrazi does normally get access to a single copy each of Grafdigger's Cage and Engineered Explosives, Elves will probably bring in hate like Scavenging Ooze and Rest in Peace, and B/W Eldrazi will sometimes have a few wraths like Flaying Tendrils or Zealous Persecution.

+1 Abrupt Decay, +1 Fatal Push: Blows up Aether Vial, Noble Hierarch, and other hard-to-deal-with creatures.

+2 Lingering Souls: Excels against opposing creature decks.

-1 Satyr Wayfinder, -2 Rally the Ancestors, -1 Dark Confidant: Traditionally bad against beatdown decks.

A close but definitely favorable matchup; our cards have about the same power level, but we're basically made ready to sacrifice creatures and are perfectly happy to oblige in case of a Smallpox. Overall, our deck has redundancy, which is the death knell for Smallpox most of the time, unless they manage to mana screw us early with Smallpox or ultimate Liliana of the Veil behind their recursive threats. In short, we have a much better late-game with the buttload of card draw in this deck, so it's mostly up to how far we fall behind in the early turns, both in life and on resources.

Post-Board: A small number of Damnations are definitely coming in, but the general Smallpox sideboard is more focused on artifact/land hate and combo hate that doesn't really address our win condition.

+2 Lingering Souls: Resilience is key against this deck, and netting four bodies off one card through discard is pretty powerful. Plus, it lets us fight 1/1 flying Spirits with more 1/1 flying Spirits.

-1 Collected Company & -1 Rally the Ancestors: Nonbo with Souls, plays into wraths, and bad against discard and mana taxing.

This matchup is basically racing at its finest. Their creatures are bigger, but ours are greater in number, are resilient, and gain us life. Post-board, they get Izzet Staticaster, which is obviously awesome, but we get Lingering Souls, Inquisition of Kozilek, Fatal Push and Abrupt Decay in place of bad cards like Dark Confidant, mainly because of the life loss, and both some number of Collected Company and Rally the Ancestors, which get taxed by Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and punished further by Thalia, Heretic Cathar, since the creatures enter tapped and unable to block. Also, post-board Grafdigger's Cage also hoses these two.

Weird deck, weird matchup; our deck isn't exactly top-deck dependent thanks to Dark Confidant and Ensnaring Bridge doesn't exactly lock us out thanks to the drain kill, but Leyline of Sanctity and Pithing Needle do make winning quite difficult. We do have more time than usual due to the fact that we can sac to gain life in response to Ghirapur AEther Grid activation, but for only so long. Overall, this matchup can go both ways and is highly versatile depending on our draw, but I would put our chances at 50% both pre-board and post-board overall.

Post-Board: More good hate like Pithing Needle and Grafdigger's Cage coming from our opponent.

+1 Thoughtseize, +2 Inquisition of Kozilek: Automatic board-in against control, although it's a bit worse now since our opponent has main-deck Leyline of Sanctity and isn't going to be boarding it out no matter what.

+1 Abrupt Decay, +2 Reclamation Sage, +1 Stony Silence: Kills Lantern of Insight, Ensnaring Bridge, and other lock pieces.

-2 Cartel Aristocrat: Nothing to get protection from.

-1 Rally the Ancestors, -2 Satyr Wayfinder: Rally is hit-or-miss against this deck; it can be a very impactful draw in the late-game, but it dies hard to discard if it's in our opening hand.

-1 Blood Artist: Really funky board-out here, but 0 power means that our opponent can basically just maneuver us into this dead draw whenever they want, and the only real benefit we get from it in this matchup is occasional sacrificial drain value.

Unfair combo matchups as a whole are pretty horrible, and these two are no exception. We're basically counting on our 5 discard/removal spells as well as 2 Stony Silences for Ad Nauseam and 2 Fulminator Mages for Amulet Titan with possible additional board-ins of Surgical Extraction to hold them off until we can slam enough creatures to hopefully outrace them. The Ad Nauseam matchup is definitely worse, since they have a full playset of Leyline of Sanctity to lock us out and even dodge our discard.

Despite the jank attack from our opponents, this grindy creature deck really matches up poorly against our token approach. After sideboarding, we get stuff like Abrupt Decay to kill Knight of the Reliquary and Tireless Tracker as well as Lingering Souls to gum up the board even further, but nothing much else since we're already pretty much sideboarded against grindy creature decks.

Our deck is already excellent against midrange, and this deck's removal suite in particular doesn't play well against Lingering Souls and Voice of Resurgence. Post-board, we get Fatal Push to kill Young Pyromancer, as well as more resilient threats in the form of Lingering Souls.

We would be great against this deck without Emrakul, the Aeons Torn + Through the Breach , since Blood Moon is annoying but beatable. However, that combo or the alternative win-con (Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker + Pestermite ) makes this matchup basically a bye for our opponents in Game 1 because we simply aren't fast enough nor do we have dedicated disruption, and their cantrips add enough consistency to combo off quite easily. Now, post-board, we get a playset of discard over slow cards like Kitchen Finks and Liliana, Heretical Healer  , but the debut of the Madcap Experiment + Platinum Emperion combo (which we obviously cannot interact with) makes this matchup even more difficult.

Overall though, I think this deck is not as good as it was 2-3 months ago when Grixis Death's Shadow was king and unfair decks like Storm and Dredge were at an all-time low, with the meta consisting of favorable matchups like GDS, Burn, Affinity, UW Control, Abzan, and Death & Taxes with the exception of Eldrazi Tron.

Now, with the lightning-fast Modern format, populated largely by fast decks like Storm, Affinity, Ad Nauseam, etc, there's a much smaller pool of decks that actually care about our slower, grindier combo. Of course, to beat those decks, I could slot in more of a removal/discard package (maindeck Thoughtseizes and Fatal Pushes), but overall I felt that those cards lowered the consistency of the deck too much to really fit. Overall, if you're looking for a deck that has an inherently good matchup against fast combo, this is not the deck for you.

Still, even with the uptick in combo, the deck has good winning chances against five of the seven current Tier 1 decks (Grixis Death's Shadow, Burn, Jeskai Tempo, Affinity, Humans), and is straight-up horrible against only two decks (Eldrazi Tron, Gx Tron). It is also fine against the most popular decks in Tier Two; good against UW Control, Dredge, Jund Death's Shadow, Jund Midrange, and Abzan, 50/50 against Lantern Control and Titanshift, and bad against Elves, UR Storm, Temur Breach, and Counters Company.

Eternal Witness: Excellent in grindy matchups like Mardu, Jund and UW Control, since it generates card advantage and plays well with our combo. Witness can go crazy with Collected Company, get back important creatures, synergizes well with Satyr Wayfinder, and its ability can be reused with Rally the Ancestors. However, it's pretty lackluster against fast combo and also folds to graveyard hate. Recommended for tempo/midrange-heavy metagames like Jund, Abzan, or Grixis Death's Shadow.

Tidehollow Sculler: Double duty in this deck; the 2/2 body is fine, and immediately sacing it in response to the discard trigger gives us a free Thoughtseize with additional drain tacked on. Recommended for combo-heavy metagames like Storm and Ad Nauseam.

Extra graveyard hate (Surgical Extraction, Leyline of the Void): Dredge and Living End are OK matchups without, but if graveyards start mattering more, these cards will probably need to make it into your sideboard.

Fatal Push: Too much removal does dilute your deck a bit, but additional interaction is great against Affinity, 5C Humans, and other creature-based combo, aggro or midrange decks.

Pithing Needle & Leyline of Sanctity: Pretty fringe anti-combo options, but they're surprisingly useful in a number of matchups; Needle can hose anything from planeswalkers to fetch lands for a cheap price, and Leyline is backbreaking post-board against Scapeshift, Burn, Mill, Ad Nauseam, Storm, and discard-heavy decks.

Pithing Needle: Used to be an all-star in the sideboard until Counters Company tanked and it wasn't doing anything except shutting down Affinity finishers like Arcbound Ravager and Endbringer while slightly impeding Eldrazi Tron as well as tempo decks like Death & Taxes and Merfolk by blanking things like Expedition Map and Aether Vial. It does cost only 1 mana and has a wide range of targets (planeswalkers, creatures, artifacts, random janky stuff like Seismic Assault, as well as fetchlands, creaturelands, and other utility lands like Slayers' Stronghold or Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion), but only being able to target a single card makes it less of a hard-lock and more hit or miss against Affinity and Eldrazi Tron, which are the only 2 Tier 1 matchups where it's worth consideration.

The only thing it straight-up kills is dedicated combo with some sort of activated ability, like Counters Company. It was just so randomly useless in some matchups that I decided to throw it out for 2 Fulminator Mage, which are much better against Tron and Titanshift. Still, since the Vizier combo has returned to Tier 1/2 standards (although its permanent residence there seems in question at the current moment), this card merits serious consideration and I'm actually considering cutting a Fulminator just to have it as a one-of, since Fulminator itself only comes in against random big-mana or utility-land decks like various versions of Scapeshift and Tron. I'll admit, Needle actually does have more utility in the deck than Fulminator in the current exact metagame, since it's virtually the only card that hits essential parts of UW Control like Celestial Colonnade while also blanking Tron finishers like Karn Liberated. Still, I'm holding firm on the sideboard until this new chaos brought on by WotC's data issue dies down, as Needle is just clearly worse in the sideboard without the prominence of GWx Company.

Leyline of Sanctity: With the recent downfall of our Grixis lords and the corresponding huge upticks in Ad Nauseam, Storm, and Titanshift, this probably needs to make it into the sideboard if you're playing against a combo/Burn-heavy Modern meta, but I personally don't think it synergizes well at all with our gameplan since it takes a card out of our hand and dilutes our deck somewhat.

Selfless Spirit & Burrenton Forge-Tender: These two are a nod to the fact that our deck is somewhat weak to wraths like Pyroclasm and Anger of the Gods, with the latter being especially painful since it exiles our stuff if we don't have a sac outlet on board. The problem I see going forward with one of these two cards in the sideboard is that there isn't a wrath-centric archetype really in Modern except UW Control and maybe Titanshift, and both of them can just opt to use another removal spell (Lightning Bolt or Path to Exile, most likely) on our Forge-Tender or Spirit before they wrath our board.

Bloodghast & Skirsdag High Priest: Two high-potential black cards that I need to keep considering for this deck. Bloodghast has the unfortunate drawback of not being able to block, which is sometimes a rather big problem (chumping is a really common way in this deck to prevent damage and kill our own creatures for benefit without a sac outlet on the board), and High Priest keeps tapping down our creatures to make 5/5 demons, which is amazing but also problematic at the same time because we want enough creatures to comfortably block and not die with.

Other versions of Liliana, like Liliana, Death's Majesty and Liliana, the Last Hope are also relevant, since they bring back creatures from the graveyard. Liliana, Death's Majesty, in particular, makes tokens in addition to bringing creatures back, allowing us to sac them for even more value. The problem with her is that she is just so slow in this deck, and fits much better in a Reanimator-type strategy with her -3 ability. Other token-making planeswalkers worth considering include Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, Sorin, Solemn Visitor, and Sorin, Lord of Innistrad.

Mogg War Marshal, Falkenrath Aristocrat, Hanweir Garrison, Hanweir Militia Captain  , Oketra's Monument: These cards are optional add-ins in case of a red splash or even going Mardu. Both approaches would involve more of a token/go-wide strategy with early transformed Militia Captains and Hanweir Garrison attacks providing us with huge numbers of fodder for our Aristocrats. Falkenrath Aristocrat is also a legitimate finisher, the downside being that some of the cards we have, like Voice of Resurgence, aren't humans and therefore don't really synergize well. Finally, Mogg War Marshal is a sick deal with a death trigger and two bodies for 2 mana, but still requires some backup to push it above Voice of Resurgence level.

The deck used to be more of an all-in tokens build with Lingering Souls that was much more resilient; Souls is in many ways the epitome of resilience (4 bodies off of one card, as well as resilience to both counters and discard; what more can you ask for?), and therefore obviously has a very great matchup against Death's Shadow and Affinity, where it just shuts down so many of the flying aggro creatures that the deck depends on. However, Souls does negate much of the explosive potential our deck has, since running it would mean we would also greatly dilute the strength of our card draw and high-impact spells (Collected Company, Rally the Ancestors, Duskwatch Recruiter  , etc.), resulting in a much slower deck and therefore less chances against unfair combo like Ad Nauseam and Storm. In the end, Souls got relegated to the sideboard specifically for Death's Shadow, UW Control, and Affinity matchups.

The other way I considered going was more of a Dredge-type approach, where the deck would rely on sterling recursive threats like Bloodghast and Bloodsoaked Champion to sac, return, and repeat for value and eventual death by draining. Alternatively, the deck could also go all-in on comboing off with Rally the Ancestors (and its Body Double, Return to the Ranks) by playing self-mill like Satyr Wayfinder and capitalizing on the flashback part of Lingering Souls. The problem with this was that it got really wrecked by all kinds of graveyard hate and discard, and relying on a small number of certain cards instead of just being able to accumulate the huge board that this deck can pull off seemed risky given the high-disruption current metagame.

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Date added 6 years
Last updated 6 years
Key combos
Legality

This deck is Modern legal.
Rarity (main - side)

3 - 1 Mythic Rares

29 - 4 Rares

15 - 8 Uncommons

9 - 2 Commons
Cards 60
Avg. CMC 2.16
Tokens Elemental */* GW, Emblem Liliana, Defiant Necromancer, Human Cleric 1/1 BW, Spirit 1/1 W, Zombie 2/2 B
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